Harry Potter and the Disreputable Dog
by Dreamer with a Dancer's Heart
Summary: Oneshot crossover between Harry Potter and Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy. Post Abhorsen.


Disclaimer: I do not own the concepts from Harry Potter which belongs to J.K. Rowling. Nor do I own the concepts from the Abhorsen Trilogy which belongs to Garth Nix. I own only the crossing.

Dim moonlight shone down on the doorstep of Number Four Privet Drive, illuminating a small child wrapped loosely in a thin blanket. Slowly, crystals of ice crept through the grass between the street and the house, and the already nippy autumn air took on an even deeper chill. Had anyone been awake, they would have heard a distant sound akin to that of a quickly moving river. The child on the steps shivered slightly in his blanket, the first signs of waking beginning to cross his face. All of a sudden, at the very epicenter of the ice and the chill, a large dog of questionable parentage appeared, already sniffing about and shaking large quantities of water across the yard, plants crumpling wherever it landed.

"Well, this is a strange place," came a gruff female voice emanating from, oddly enough, the dog. She was large, about half the height of a grown man, with black and tan fur. A broad, dark red collar encircled her neck and glowed slightly in the relative darkness. Her head cocked to the side, she sat on her haunches and looked up at the cookie cutter house in front of her. "It feels almost like Ancelstierre, but there is Charter magic nearby." She sneezed abruptly. "And free magic too. How very odd." Standing up, she padded across the yard, stopping just below the front stoop.

As the first hint of a crying child hit her ears, she leapt up onto the porch. Snuffling through the blanket, she uncovered something that surprised her. A small boy, not much older than a year old, with already a full head of black hair greeted her eyes. She sniffed him all over, paying especially close attention to his forehead, where there was an angry red cut in the rough shape of a lightening bolt. She sneezed twice more in rapid succession. That was where the free magic was coming from, but where was the Charter magic? All the electrical lights were still working, which was even more confusing. She sniffed again, this time focusing on the body of the child. "How very strange." This boy was basically a Charter Stone, but rather than being bound in granite and mortar, the magic was held within flesh and blood. He was a living breathing source of the Charter.

By this time, the small child was shivering uncontrollably. He was too small to have any protection against the chill November wind. The dog lay down next to him and curled up to keep him warm. He huddled into her body, his tiny hands grasping at her fur. She sat there for a while, thinking. The free magic in the cut on his forehead would act like a flaw in the stone, corrupting and corroding the innate Charter magic held in within the diminutive body until the living Charter Stone cracked in half. There needed to be a way to keep the balance, to lock away the free magic for a while. Looking back down at his forehead, she decided that the free magic could be contained much the same as another young man she knew. Lowering her head, she licked his face, leaving behind a single Charter mark, directly over the lightning bolt wound. The dog then settled down, curling even tighter around the tiny body and kept watch over him through the long cold night, never even knowing why he was on that stoop in the first place.

The sun had been up for several hours already before the door behind them opened and a tall, thin woman stepped out onto the front porch and screamed. There, covered in a single thin blanket was a little boy, hugging a small soapstone statue of a dog tightly to his chest.

Six years later:

Seven year old Harry Potter huddled in his cupboard looking down at his scraped and bleeding hands from where Dudley had pushed him down on the sidewalk in the front lawn. Aunt Petunia hadn't even blinked and had merely pushed Harry through the cupboard door, telling him not to bleed on any of her things. He glanced up at the shelf that held his only personal belonging. It was a small statue of a dog, with a friendly and welcoming grin. He reached up and took it down, cradling it in his lap.

"I wish you were a real dog. Maybe you could keep Dudley from being mean to me." No sooner had he said that than the blood on his hands dripped onto the dog's carved collar. Bright light, a welcoming warmth, and thousands of shapes he didn't recognize burst out of the statue, causing him to cover his eyes. A horrible smell like hot metal reached his nose and he began to panic as the statue got hotter and hotter until he couldn't even hold it anymore. Harry threw the figure across the small room and drew himself into a small ball in a corner.

The light and the stench dimmed, only to be replaced with a different type of warmth: the warmth that always accompanied large animals. He peered out from behind his hands as a large furry body pounced on top of him, showering him with large wet kisses.

"Wh-what are you? Where did you come from" he asked as bravely as he could, not that he really expected it to reply.

The large dog sat back on its haunches, cocked its head to the side, and began to scratch behind a large red collar with one of its hind legs. Replacing its leg on the ground it looked at him and said, "I am the Disreputable Dog. Can we go for a walk?"

End.

AN: This is only a one shot. I am horrible at updating longer stories as evidenced by my Circle of Magic/Harry Potter crossover. Sorry about that by the way; huge case of writers block. I'm working on overcoming it, but no promises. Review if you feel like it! (please do… make my day…)


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